ue and sufficient evidence of its possession.

"The absence of these powers shows conclusively the absence of the
life. If a man does not love God and walk humbly with Him; if he
does not long after Holiness, love his comrades, and care for
souls, it will be satisfying evidence that he has gone back to the
old nature--that is, to spiritual death.

"All Spiritual Life is not only imparted by Jesus Christ, but
sustained by direct union with Him.

"'I am the Vine,' He says, 'ye are the branches; he that abideth in
Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without
Me ye can do nothing' (John xv. 6).

"Nothing will make up for the lack of this life.

"This, indeed, applies to every kind of existence. You cannot find
a substitute for life in the vegetable kingdom. Try the trees in
the garden. Look at that dead apple-tree. As you see it there, it
is useless, ugly, fruitless. What will make up for the absence of
life? Will the digging, or the manuring of the ground around it do
this? No! That will be all in vain. If it is dead, there is only
one remedy, and that is to give it life--new life.

"Take the animal world. What can you do to make up for the lack of
life in a dog? I read the other day of a lady who had a pet dog.
She loved it to distraction. It died. Whatever could she do with it
to make up for its loss of life? Well, she might have preserved it,
stuffed it, jewelled its eyes, and painted its skin. But had she
done so, these things would have been a disappointing substitute.
So she buried it, and committed suicide in her grief, and was
buried by its side.

"Take the loss of human life. What is the use of a dead man? Go to
the death-chamber. Look at that corpse. The loved ones are
distracted. What can they do? They may dress it, adorn it, appeal
to it. But all that human skill and effort can conceive will be in
vain. All that the broken hearts can say or do must soon terminate,
as did Abraham's mourning for Sarah, when he said, 'Give me a piece
of land that I may bury my dead out of my sight.' Nothing can make
up for the lack of life.

"But this is specially true of the Spiritual Life of which we are
speaking. Take this in its application to a Corps. If you want an
active, generous, fighting, dare-devil Corps, able